


Oranges

by berrymascarpone



Category: Bleach
Genre: Confessions, Crack, Explicit Language, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, Kisuke is a scientist, M/M, Post-Canon, boys being dumb, exploding oranges, sex injuries, somehow feels snuck their way in, the wonderful friendship between grumpy cat bastard and dramatic cat bitch, you know that thing where you practice sutures on grapes?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 01:00:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29893224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/berrymascarpone/pseuds/berrymascarpone
Summary: Grimmjow really needs to learn healing kidō in the next few hours. No, no one is dying of injuries too embarrassing to show anyone else, but it’s really, really important that he learn it right now.If only he could stop blowing up the oranges.Or,Grimmjow learns a new skill, and Yoruichi gets her oranges in the end.
Relationships: Grimmjow Jaegerjaques & Shihouin Yoruichi, Grimmjow Jaegerjaques/Kurosaki Ichigo, Shihouin Yoruichi/Urahara Kisuke
Comments: 4
Kudos: 87





	Oranges

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve fallen down the Bleach rabbit hole and straight into the giant pile of crack at the bottom.
> 
> Also, no one seems to know how healing works so I just made something up here.

“Yeah, right there,” Yoruichi moaned, “harder, Kisuke. Put your back into it!”

Kisuke kneaded the knot of tension on her lower back, humming happily as he rubbed the massage oil deeper into her skin.

It was the perfect evening. The store was closed on Sunday, and Tessai had taken out the kids to soccer practice (she was sure Jinta had only signed up so he could be within six feet of Yuzu, and Ururu had only signed up to be allowed to kick things at Jinta’s face without repercussion). Yoruichi had wrangled the kids a dinner invitation at the Kurosaki’s after that, so they’d be gone for the rest of the evening too. Their grumpy, semi-permanent arrancar tenant had gone out earlier, looking surprisingly cheerful, and not even the murderous kind of happy. Of course, Yoruichi reflected, that was probably because soccer practice meant that the Kurosaki household would be empty save for the eldest son.

The important thing was, Yoruichi and Kisuke had the whole place to themselves for an entire five hours. That meant the sexy fun times, and Yoruichi had this new yoga position she’d been practicing recently that she wanted to try out.

Yoruichi was just getting ready to propose that they move to the yoga mat when the door to the shop slammed open hard enough for them to hear, even in the bedroom.

“Oi, Hat ‘n Clogs bastard! Cat-bitch!”

It wasn’t hard to guess who was interrupting their sexy fun times.

“Just ignore him,” she hissed, grabbing at Kisuke’s wrist before he could stand up.

“I can feel you in there!” Grimmjow said, “come out!”

“I don’t think he’s going to go away if we ignore him,” Kisuke pointed out in an unreasonably reasonable tone.

“Fuck that, do you know how long I’ve been waiting to try this?”

“If you’re plannin’ to ignore me and fuck, I’m gonna start licking the candy!” Grimmjow shouted.

“Shit,” Yoruichi sighed, and released Kisuke’s hand. She should never have let Jinta teach him that threat. “Maybe we can distract him with a binding kidō and throw him into the garganta.”

Kisuke smiled indulgently. Unfortunately, she didn’t think she was the one being indulged. “Let’s see what he wants,” the overly curious bastard said, “it could be quite interesting.”

She knew how he got when his interest was piqued, so she groaned and rolled up onto her feet. “Fine,” she said, settling Kisuke’s haori over her shoulders, “let’s see what the fucker wants.”

===

Grimmjow wanted to learn healing kidō.

Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez, killer arrancar and heartless monster who stole sushi off the plates of kids and innocent cats-turned-beautiful-women, wanted to learn how to patch someone up.

 _Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez_ , who was as soft as a broken glass bottle full of razors, wanted to know how to _heal people_.

“Who’s dying?” Yoruichi asked.

“No one’s fucking dying,” Grimmjow snapped.

“Alright then, what is it? Trying to increase your stamina? Lost a bet? Embarrassing injury? Oh my god, is it a sex injury?”

“It’s not a fucking sex injury!” Grimmjow shouted. That was a bit too loud to be true. Yoruichi tilted her head, giving him a once-over. There was no outward sign of injury, and it wasn’t like he covered much up in his skintight jumpsuit and open jacket. She smelled a slight tinge of coppery blood, but Grimmjow always smelled faintly of iron and blood, probably from years of bathing in the blood of his enemies and not practicing proper hygiene in the Hueco Mundo desert. Well, no one had ever died of an embarrassing sex injury, she was sure.

“Can this wait till tomorrow?” She said.

“No.” Grimmjow grunted, and then refused to give any further explanation beyond a pissy look and a stubborn insistence that he had to learn, right now, or he’d make good on his threat of licking the entirety of the store’s candy inventory and putting it back.

“Do you even know the basics of kidō?” Yoruichi asked, raising an eyebrow, “Healing isn’t as easy as punching someone or swinging your sword around like it’s an extension of your dick.”

“I can do a Gran Rey cero,” Grimmjow said with a jut of his chin, “that’s way better than any pitiful shinigami spell.”

“If you try to heal someone like performing a Gran Rey cero, it is not going to end well,” Kisuke said mildly. “In fact, it will probably end the same way. That is, with blood, guts, and screaming.”

“Tch.”

Yoruichi sighed. The faster they got this over with, the faster she could get back to her sexy fun times with Kisuke.

She dredged up her ancient memories of learning kaidō herself. It had been a really long time, and she had never been great at it anyways. But she did remember the beginner exercises. Her eyes met Kisuke’s amused gaze and she knew they were thinking the same thing.

“Let’s practice on something easier first,” she said.

===

Grimmjow stared at the orange on the kitchen counter. It was a perfectly round Satsuma mandarin, fragrant and at the perfect ripeness. Yoruichi had been looking forward to eating it. She had a whole bag of them actually and was resigned to not being able to eat a single one now that Kisuke had offered them up as sacrificial fodder for Grimmjow’s ill-conceived attempts at beginner’s kaidō.

“Kaidō is all about precision and control,” Kisuke explained, “Channeling your reiatsu into the patient is no simple task, and it can even be dangerous if performed incorrectly. Therefore, most beginners start out with plants and non-sentient objects.”

He cut a tiny slit into the orange peel with a fruit knife. “Try to heal this first.”

Grimmjow glowered. “And how the hell am I supposed to do that?”

“Allow me to demonstrate,” Kisuke said gamely, and held his hand over the fruit. His palm glowed a calming green.

“Pour your reiatsu carefully into the orange, then use the synergy between you and it to repair the cut. Visualize the whole fruit and try to restore the orange to its uncut state through the communion of your reiatsu.”

The cut on the orange wavered under the glow and slowly closed itself up, until all that remained was whole, uncut peel and the faint scent of citrus.

“See?” Kisuke said, “now you try.” He cut another slice into the peel.

Grimmjow frowned, glancing between Kisuke’s hand and the fruit. “You want me to commune. With an orange.”

“Maybe if you squint, it’ll remind you of something else that’s orange,” Yoruichi said, slyly. Never say that she was not the best fucking moral support.

“Tch,” Grimmjow ignored her and glared at the orange. He held a hand over it, pressing his lips into a thin line. A faint blue-green glow emanated from his palm. Kisuke leaned forward eagerly, and Yoruichi could practically see that brilliant scientific mind of his whirring into gear, making notes and already planning a whole battery of experiments to put the arrancar through once they had the time. She might have been offended that he seemed more interested in Grimmjow’s attempts at kaidō than the prospect of her yoga moves if she hadn’t known him for so long. As it was, years of association had conditioned her to find his mad scientist glee a tiny bit cute.

The orange promptly exploded.

Kisuke blinked pulp and juice from his eyes. “Fascinating,” he said.

Grimmjow’s face was screwed up in a look of disgust. He stuck out his tongue and licked a bit of pulp from the corner of his mouth, and immediately spat it out onto the kitchen floor.

“That was fucking awesome,” Yoruichi cackled, and slammed another orange down on the counter, in the remnants of the old one. “Again!”

“It looks like you transferred too much reiatsu, more than its physical aspect could contain.” Kisuke said, wiping his face with a kitchen towel. He made the next cut and plastered on a patently false smile, “but Let’s try that again.”

“Fuckin’ oranges,” Grimmjow said under his breath, and held his hand over the next sacrifice.

A few moments later, that one exploded as well.

“You may want to adjust your visualization a bit,” Kisuke suggested as Yoruichi tossed another fruit over, “I find that violent intent is quite counterproductive when trying to heal.”

“Healing is really fuckin’ lame then.” Grimmjow muttered, starting his third attempt.

“You’re the one who wants to learn kaidō,” Yoruichi said, “so who’s the real lame-o here?”

The next orange exploded, right on time.

Five oranges later, Kisuke rubbed his chin with a finger and said, “Perhaps the difficulty is related to your Hollow reiatsu. I’ve never seen a Hollow do any restorative measures beyond self-healing.” He looked at Grimmjow eagerly, “ _Do_ Hollows have healing abilities?” 

“We don’t do that kind of shit,” Grimmjow said flatly. “It ain’t in our nature. Any Hollow dumb enough to heal another deserves to be eaten.”

“Ah.” Kisuke looked like he wanted his fan and hat, to look mysterious and hide the slight slip of his perpetually cheerful smile. Instead, he had to settle for covering his mouth with a hand like the rest of them. It made him look like a jackass.

“I suppose you could try tuning into your more shinigami half then?” He offered.

“Tch,” Grimmjow scoffed, and blew up another orange.

===

They all stared at the last Satsuma mandarin, sitting in the guts of its companions, the lone survivor of a terrible massacre.

Grimmjow let out a snarl that reverberated through his chest and the kitchen like a crack of thunder.

“I ain’t made for this, okay?” He said, fisting a hand in his juice-soaked hair, “I’m an arrancar! I was made to kill and fuck shit up! Hollows _consume_ , we don’t _restore_ shit. How the hell am I supposed to fucking _heal_ , when everything I touch falls to bloody pieces?”

He snatched up the orange and threw it at the wall, where it burst on impact with a sad splat.

Yoruichi pursed her lips. Grimmjow had been hanging around the shop like a hungry stray long enough for her to start to get a feel for him. One of the things she’d noticed was that every time he felt any kind of intense emotion that wasn’t anger, he managed to turn it into an angry outburst. There had been many angry outbursts in the early days.

Like the time he accidentally stepped on Ururu’s diorama of the Shōten that she’d made for a school project, cracking it down the middle and crushing the little paper cutouts of all the Shōten inhabitants, little Jinta and Tessai and Kisuke, the tiny black cat, and the tall blue figure that he’d crumpled in his fist before Yoruichi could get a good look. He’d shouted at her for leaving it lying about where anyone could step on it, and Ururu had run off in tears. Tessai had helped her make another one, and she’d avoided the arrancar for a week. Much later, Yoruichi had found the diorama in Grimmjow’s closet of a room, patched up inexpertly with duct tape, and the little paper cutouts carefully smoothed out and placed around the matchbox living room table in a parody of a family dinner, including the blue-haired figure with a childish smile drawn on its tiny face.

He looked like that sad, floppy little paper Grimmjow now, slumped against the kitchen counter, rubbing orange juice out of his bloodshot eyes. There was a faint tremor in his fingers, and his hands had a rubbed-raw quality, like skin that had been scrubbed for too long under hot water. A trace of rusty brown remained under one fingernail.

Kurosaki was useless at kidō healing too, she remembered.

She let out a long, aggravated sigh.

Before Kisuke could react, she grabbed the fruit knife out of his hand and brought it down on her left palm, slicing it open right down the center. She immediately regretted this decision, because there were a hell of a lot of nerve endings in the hand. But fuck her if she wasn’t a dramatic bitch, so she gritted her teeth into a clenched grin and held out the bleeding hand to Grimmjow’s slack-jawed face. 

“The _fuck_?” He spluttered.

“Heal me.”

“Did you _see_ what I did to the fucking oranges?”

“What, you think I’m no better than some fruit?” She said, leaning forward. 

Grimmjow shuffled backwards to avoid her, but she advanced, hand held out like a cross against a vampire, until he was hunched in the corner of the kitchen, back pressed against the cabinets.

“Yoruichi,” Kisuke started to say from over her shoulder, but she held up her right hand, still holding the fruit knife, in a quelling gesture, and he fell silent.

“I am not going to let you blow me up,” she said, eyes fixed on Grimmjow, “you think I don’t know what you’re capable of? I was in the Winter War. I faced off against fucking Aizen and got my ass handed to me, but I lived. I fought that stupid poison Quincy with you and survived. You think a bit of your dumb reiatsu is enough to take off my hand?”

He said nothing, but unplastered himself from the spice cabinet and sent her a mulish glare.

She poked him in the chest, leaving a bloody fingerprint. “You’re afraid of what you might do to _me_? You should be afraid of what _I_ am going to do to _you_ if I find that you’ve just wasted my sexy fun time with Kisuke, _and my oranges_ , on some self-effacing pity party!”

Grimmjow flinched back, as if she’d sprayed him in the face with a squirt bottle.

She held out her bloody hand again, palm up like an offering. “Come on,” she said, half snarling, “you want to learn how to heal? Then _heal_ me!”

He stared at her for a long moment, like a cautious stray with its hackles raised, looking for threats. Finally, he dropped his gaze to her hand. The blood was pooling in her palm, spreading sticky in the creases of her hand.

He only hesitated for a second before he took her hand in his, carefully as if it were a stinging viper, and covered the sluggishly bleeding cut with a palm. He let out a slow breath.

Kisuke was leaning his chin on her shoulder, looking intently at the process. She could feel the tension in his arms, pressed against her back. He opened his mouth to say something that she knew would be either very stupid or very nerdy. Like hell was she going to let him ruin this beautiful moment of character growth though, so she snuck the fruit knife behind her and poked his thigh, right where it met his hip. He jumped and shut his mouth.

Grimmjow’s hand began to glow.

She felt the rush of foreign reiatsu flooding her palm and halfway up her arm too, and bit back a hiss at the strange sensation. It was like sinking her hand in a pool of kittens and being pricked by a thousand little kitten claws; not exactly comfortable but she could take it. More importantly, her hand was beginning to heal. Slowly, and with jumps and starts, her flesh knitted together. She clenched her teeth and tried not to flail.

The thing was, Grimmjow’s kaidō _itched_. Like ants crawling all over her arm up to the elbow, after she had dipped it in maple syrup. The fruit knife clattered to the floor, and she clutched a handful of Kisuke’s pants with clenched-white fingers. And perhaps a bit of his thigh through the pants. He may have yelped a little, but such was the price of being a supportive father figure.

“Don’t you dare stop,” she growled when Grimmjow looked up in alarm, and the glow of his kaidō dimmed to near extinction.

He frowned, teeth worrying at his lower lip, but the kaidō started back up again. She hoped Kisuke didn’t have any major arteries running through that patch of leg, because she was sure as shit cutting off circulation there. The itch mounted, until she was sweating, and even Kisuke was wincing in sympathy.

And then it was done. She sagged as the itch faded and flexed her fingers. Everything responded perfectly, though still suffused with a sense of static, like distant pins and needles.

“Decent enough work, for someone who’s only had a few hours of practice,” she said, grinning in triumph, “and it seems I’ve still got all my fingers. Itched like hell, though.”

“The itching may be a side effect of arrancar reiatsu,” Kisuke said, unable to contain his theorizing, “the incompatibility with your shinigami reiatsu could cause interference, which would manifest in symptoms like irregular neuronal firings, hence the itching. If arrancar are truly a mix between Hollow and shinigami, then—”

“No one asked you, nerd,” Yoruichi said fondly, patting his head, “just let the man enjoy his moment.”

Grimmjow blinked down at her hand, still smeared with blood but now whole and unscarred. There was a fragile incredulity in his expression, and he kept looking between her hand and his own, as if he were looking for some hidden trick.

“I—did it?” he murmured.

“Sure did,” Yoruichi said, and, on impulse, patted his face with her healed hand. He jumped back, scowling and wiping the blood that had dripped from her hand off his mask fragment.

“Watch it!” he snarled.

“Aww, don’t you want to enjoy the fruits of your labor?” she said, with a snicker.

“Wouldn’t need any fruits if you hadn’t gone and stabbed yourself.” he said, but he was looking at her hand again, and there was a twitch of a smile at the corner of his lips.

Yoruichi wiped her hand clean on Kisuke’s haori. There was a warm feeling in her chest, the kind of gooey melted-chocolate-center feel that she got when Ururu managed to kick a goal in soccer with a move she’d learned from Yoruichi, or when Kisuke finally made a new prototype that didn’t blow up when she tested it.

Fuck, was she proud of Grimmjow? Gods, she was getting soft. Still, she knew Grimmjow wasn’t the type to respond well to outright praise, so she couldn’t exactly go around petting him like she did the other members of the household. But she had her ways.

“182 oranges, 25 lemons, 47 mangoes, and one watermelon.” Yoruichi said, leaning against the counter.

“What?”

“That’s how many practice fruits I went through before I could finally heal a paper cut.”

Grimmjow’s eyes widened, and he opened his mouth to speak. Nothing came out for a moment, and then he said, “...a watermelon?”

“I imagined it was my kaidō instructor's head,” she said, with a grin, “it was a very satisfying explosion.”

“Heh.” That was almost a real laugh.

“So, are you ready to tell us why exactly you needed to murder all my oranges?”

Grimmjow’s face blanched, his smile wiped clean off. He snapped his head to look at the clock on the wall of the kitchen, which told them that soccer practice had ended an hour ago. “Shit!”

Yoruichi sighed as he vaulted over the kitchen counter, heading for the front door. No emergency sex injuries, her ass.

“I assume you’ll be back for additional lessons?” Kisuke said, trailing him out of the kitchen, “You’ve only grasped the very basics of kaidō, there is so much more you could learn!” The gleam in his eye promised that whatever he did learn, Kisuke would be there to document the whole process and optimize the shit out of it. For science.

“Fine, whatever,” Grimmjow said, “But I really gotta go now.”

He speed-walked towards the door. Yoruichi rolled her eyes and followed.

“He’ll forgive you,” she said as they reached the front door, and he had to pause to pull on his boots.

Grimmjow’s shoulders jumped to his ears. “I have no idea what you’re talkin’ about,” he muttered.

“You should’ve seen how badly I scratched up Kisuke’s back the first time we tried gigai sex. I think he cried.” Yoruichi said, with a snicker.

“Hey, what happened to don’t kiss and tell?” Kisuke said in mock offense, then inclined his head, “It’s true though. I turned the sensitivity to the highest setting across the board, which was a bit of a mistake in retrospect.”

“You’re both fuckin’ disgusting, and I want those images bleached outta my brain.”

Yoruichi laughed out loud and slapped him hard on the back. “Go heal your orange,” she said.

Grimmjow stumbled to his feet and turned back to give her his middle finger. She laughed and flipped him off in return, but she also gave him a wink. His face, before he turned it away to _sonido_ in the direction of the Kurosaki Clinic, was red as a cherry.

Yoruichi and Kisuke stood in the door of the Shōten for a bit longer, watching the arrancar disappear over the rooftops into the night.

“Well?” She said, hands on her hips, tilting her head up to look at Kisuke. She shifted her stance just enough for the edge of his haori to fall off one shoulder. “Is your curiosity sated?” she barreled on before he could actually reply, “We have maybe thirty minutes before Tessai the kids come back, and I still haven’t even done my yoga stretching routine yet.”

“Tessai will not be happy to see the mess in the kitchen,” Kisuke said, glancing back hesitantly, “maybe we should clean up a bit first.”

Yoruichi grabbed her dumbass scientist by the front of his kosode and pulled his face level with her own. “We can clean up,” she murmured in his ear, “or I can spend the rest of the evening licking the orange juice off your body. All the orange juice.” She demonstrated the possibilities with a swirl of tongue on his earlobe.

Kisuke made a sound like a startled pigeon. His eyes went wide, and his knees wavered. Yoruichi laughed again, and started to drag him back to the bedroom.

They didn’t clean up until Tessai dragged them both up by the ear the next morning to scrub orange juice off the fridge.

===

_Meanwhile…_

Kurosaki wasn’t in his bed, where Grimmjow had left him earlier, grumbling about stupid arrancar and their stupidly sharp claws. He wasn’t anywhere in the room, but his reiatsu, as well as those of his sisters and the Shōten kids, flickered downstairs.

Grimmjow’s pulse spiked. Shit. He froze, crouched in the windowsill debating whether to leave or face the consequences, when Kurosaki abruptly stopped whatever he was doing on the first floor and came stomping up the stairs. He threw the door open hard enough for it to thud against the wall.

Kurosaki didn’t look happy. But neither did he look like he couldn’t sit comfortably.

“Where the hell were you?” he hissed.

Grimmjow flared his nostrils, giving Kurosaki a once-over. The evidence was undeniable. “You’re not injured anymore.” He said, accusingly.

“Yeah, my dad came to find me when I didn’t come down for dinner,” Kurosaki gestured sharply towards the stairs, “I had to let him fix it!”

That...left an unpleasant sensation in Grimmjow’s chest. Something slimy and gross, like the weird aftertaste of natto.

“I guess you didn’t need me after all,” he said.

Kurosaki’s glare intensified, and he took a step into the room, “Maybe I wanted you to be there to explain to my dad why there were fucking scratches all over my ass instead of running away like a coward!”

Grimmjow saw red. “Like hell I was running away!”

“If you weren’t then what were you doing!?”

“You told me to fix it!”

“And you jumped out the window ten seconds later and stayed gone for four hours!” Kurosaki said, stepping closer, “I had to listen to my dad talk about all the times he changed my diapers and saw my bare ass as a baby! He gave me safety tips for kinky sex! Do you see why I might be a little pissed?!”

“I was at Hat ‘n Clogs’ place tryin’ to learn kaidō to _fix you_!” Grimmjow snarled.

Kurosaki’s face blanked abruptly, “Oh.”

Frustration clawed at Grimmjow’s chest. What the hell was he doing here anyways? Like Kurosaki’d ever appreciate anything he did. Fuck it, he was out of here. He turned to leave.

“Wait!” Kurosaki lunged over, grabbing him by the back of his jacket. His grip overbalanced them both, and Grimmjow fell back, knocking the back of his head against Kurosaki’s forehead. They landed in a pile on Kurosaki’s bed, Grimmjow’s back against Kurosaki’s chest, legs tangled together.

Grimmjow blinked the stars out of his vision. Shit, was Kurosaki’s damn head made of concrete?

Kurosaki took the moment of disorientation to wrap his arms firmly around Grimmjow’s waist, boxing in his arms at his sides. He leaned back onto the bed, lifting Grimmjow’s feet off the ground. They flailed for a moment, Grimmjow trying to hook a toe on the windowsill or break Kurosaki’s stupidly strong grip. One of Grimmjow’s feet knocked over the lamp bedside table, sending it crashing to the ground. But Kurosaki clung like a fucking octopus covered in superglue, cinching his legs around Grimmjow’s hips, pressing them even closer together in an attempt to hold him still. 

“Let go!” He jabbed an elbow at Kurosaki’s side.

Kurosaki grunted and shouted directly into his ear, “Wait, just hear me out!”

If he fought any harder, he’d probably break something, so Grimmjow growled and let himself go limp. He flopped onto Kurosaki like the world's most petulant blanket; see how the shithead liked being pinned.

“Fine,” he mumbled into the darkness of the room.

Kurosaki paused for a moment before loosening his grip, carefully as if he were afraid Grimmjow might take the opening and leap out the window again. He was tempted, but he knew Kurosaki would track him down with the single-minded stubbornness of a hound on a hunt, and wouldn’t rest until he’d said whatever last word he wanted to get in. Kurosaki unwound his legs too, after another long moment, and shifted his arms so that they were higher up, around Grimmjow’s chest.

It was...warm. Grimmjow found abruptly that he didn’t want to move anyways. Kurosaki’s mouth was still by his ear, and the fine hairs on the back of Grimmjow’s neck prickled with his every breath. 

The only downside was that he’d have to listen to the idiot talk.

“Look, I’m sorry I yelled,” Kurosaki said, voice absent of the previous anger, “I just—it wasn’t fun, you know, having everyone staring at Dad lugging me down to the clinic, and knowing they’re probably going to laugh as soon as I leave. Dad was nice about it, but he’s embarrassing without even trying.”

Grimmjow blew out a breath that ruffled the piece of hair hanging over his forehead. “I thought I’d be able to make it back before they came back,” he said, “Took longer than I thought. Woulda come back sooner if you’d told me your dad was gonna heal you first.”

Kurosaki hummed into the nape of his neck, sending vibrations down his spine, tingling pleasantly. Grimmjow wanted to arch into it, maybe rumble a bit back, but he was supposed to be mad at Kurosaki. He stiffened instead, craning his neck away, and felt the puff of a sigh.

In the sudden quiet, they could hear the sound of quiet shuffling downstairs, the loud laugh of Kurosaki’s dad. No one seemed interested in coming upstairs. He was glad he couldn’t see Kurosaki’s expression from this angle, awkwardly piled on top of each other, back to chest, Kurosaki’s face mashed into his shoulder. Maybe there’d be recrimination, maybe forgiveness. He wasn’t sure which would be worse.

“I’m not mad about the scratches, you know,” Kurosaki said, after a moment.

“You should be,” Grimmjow said, morosely. 

That was the crux of the matter, wasn’t it? Grimmjow was all sharp edges and pointy claws. Even when he’d tried to be soft and kind and human, because Kurosaki had asked, had trusted him, he’d still royally fucked it up.

Kurosaki made a dismissive sound in his throat. “Please. I’ve had much worse, and at least we had some fun beforehand. You’ve done much worse yourself, actually, and you didn’t give me any of my top three scars.”

“I can change that if you’d like,” Grimmjow turned his head to glare at Kurosaki out of the corner of his eye, affronted. He really would. Kurosaki’s scar on his chest was a badge of honor, and the thought that the substitute shinigami didn’t have anything of his left a sour taste in his mouth.

As if sensing the thought, Kurosaki slid a hand down his chest to trace the faintly raised skin there, digging his fingers into it. Grimmjow shivered. It was unfair how good that felt, blunt nails scraping against hardened skin. He wasn’t even angry anymore. Fucking Kurosaki.

“My point is,” Kurosaki said, still absently scratching at the scar, “I’m not mad because you slipped up and your claws came out. I’m mad that you left me to die of embarrassment alone.”

“Embarrassment ain’t something you die of,” Grimmjow said, just to be petty.

He could practically feel the eye roll. “You know what I mean! Just—would’ve been nice to have you around to hold my hand and glare goat-face into submission. Or whatever.” And in a softer voice, mumbled into his shoulder blade, “I like it when you’re around.”

“Oh.” That felt like a revelation, a confession of something Grimmjow couldn't quite put words to. His throat felt tight, like it wanted to spew out more words he couldn’t quite pin down.

“You too. I like...being around,” he said at last. It sounded lame, even to his own ears. “Didn’t think you wanted me though.”

“I guess we’re both sort of idiots, aren’t we?” Kurosaki said.

“Speak for yourself, dumbass.”

He could feel Kurosaki’s laugh reverberating against his back. Cheeky fucker.

“You’re kind of squishing me.” Kurosaki said, after a pause, “If I let you go, are you going to run?”

Grimmjow shrugged. Seemed pretty pointless now that he’d admitted that he didn’t exactly hate Kurosaki’s presence.

The arms around his chest loosened, and he rolled over onto the bed, into the space between Kurosaki and the wall. Kurosaki followed his motion, and abruptly they were face-to-face, blinking at each other in the moonlight.

Kurosaki smiled. It was soft and kind and human, and Grimmjow’s heart did weird somersaults in his chest. He didn’t want to know what his own face looked like, but it made Kurosaki smile wider and reach both hands out towards him.

“C’mere,” Kurosaki said, wiggling his fingers like he wanted to tickle. Grimmjow eyed them cautiously, but shuffled forward, trying to convey with his eyes that if those got anywhere near his ticklish spots, he _would_ bite.

But Kurosaki merely wound his arms around Grimmjow’s shoulders and pulled them even closer, forehead to forehead, noses just brushing. Grimmjow’s hands found Kurosaki’s waist, and though he had no fucking idea what they were doing, he...didn’t hate it.

“You really learned kaidō from Urahara and Yoruichi for me?” Kurosaki said, into the warm, humid space between them, “I didn’t even know you could do that.”

“Didn’t know either till I tried,” Grimmjow admitted. “And now I think Kisuke’s booked me for a ton of his stupid lessons to help with his freaky science shit.”

“That’s...nice of you.”

“Fuck you, I ain’t nice.”

Kurosaki’s laugh ghosted across his lips. “Nice enough to learn lame shinigami kaidō to heal my ass.”

And, well, Grimmjow couldn’t exactly deny that. He pinched Kurosaki’s waist in retaliation, and the fucker didn’t even flinch. Unticklish bastard.

Still, there was a sweet tugging in his chest, warmth suffused through the places they were touching: forehead, nose, the heavy weight of arms across his shoulders, soft skin beneath his hands.

It wasn’t like fucking, which was usually fast and rough and satisfying in the same physiological way as a full meal. It wasn’t like fighting either, breathless and tight with adrenaline. It was something else, some mushy, human thing he’d probably never be great at, and never had any interest in doing. But, for some baffling, unidentifiable reason, Kurosaki made him want to try, and to keep trying.

“What you do to me, Kurosaki…” he murmured.

Kurosaki didn’t reply, just held on tightened his grip and ran a soothing hand through Grimmjow's hair, curling around the back of his head. They listened to faint sounds of Tessai and the kids bidding their goodbyes downstairs and the clink of bowls and cutlery being put away. For a moment, it was just the two of them in their little bubble of warmth, holding each other like they were the only two people in the world.

Then, Kurosaki breathed in deep, and wrinkled his nose. He said, “Why do you smell like oranges?”

  
  



End file.
